Week 6: Photoshop

Photoshop created by Adobe is a computer program used to enhance, create and produce images. It uses a layer system to manipulate and create pictures. Users can create images themselves or edit old ones. It offers a wide variety of capabilities from creating fire, a grass like paint stroke, the ability to change the brightness of photographs and much more! It is a complicated program that takes time to learn how to use. Journalists and media companies have been criticized for changing pictures that created and gave off false pretenses. It is used by professionals to create advertisements, t-shirt proofs and create images and logos for other business purposes. Photoshop can be used by everyday people to improve the quality of photos or to add a missing family member in a photo. It can be used in education to create interesting images and allow for the creativity of students to grow.

In advertising Photoshop plays a huge role in creating advertisements for clients. Without Photoshop many of the print ads that people see would be impossible to make. It is so important that it is required to take a class on how to effectively and responsibly use it if you are an Advertising major at the University of Florida. It quickly allows advertising agencies to create spec ads and mock ads for clients. The final product is hopefully a well polished image only made possible by Adobe Photoshop.

Since Photoshop is difficult to learn how to use I have posted a video below detailing basic controls. Hopefully it paints a clearer picture for those of you that might be confused! Enjoy!

Week 7: Digital Story Telling

Digital Technologies are changing the face of education. There are issues and obstacles to consider when using these technologies especially in the classroom. Digital Photography eliminates processing costs, allows for huge quantities at low resolution, easier image manipulation, and for immediate viewing. This is beneficial to everyone because it saves money and time. Also if the picture is bad you can just retake it! In education it can be used to develop creativity, document experiments and field trips. Digital Photography and Digital Video allow for students to capture and record what they are learning. With the advent of digital video and communications growing rapidly on the internet digital story telling has emerged. It allows for ordinary people to share their stories in a new unique form over the internet. It is a broad term that ranges from web based stories, to videos and much more.

In Advertising this really pays off because it use to be much more costly to do photo-shoots for print ads and commercials. Now photographers can immediately look at their work and what they did. They can see how the light affects certain shots and adjust accordingly. If a shoot turned out bad before digital photography they would have to have another one, which would waste lots of time and money. Also it allows for new ways to share images and videos over the internet quickly and efficiently.

I chose a digital story from a student telling people to step up take risks and be the best teachers they can be. I chose it because I think it is unique and inspiring. Here is an example of digital story telling here: